The holidays were slightly happier than expected for online retailers, comScore Inc. reports today.
The firm, which measures the online activity of consumers, says web sales increased nearly 15% in November and December over the same two months in 2013. E-retail sales for the two months, just counting purchases made on computers, totaled $53.305 billion, up from $46.546 billion a year earlier. ComScore had predicted in November a 14% increase in sales on desktops.
“The 2014 online holiday shopping season was very strong overall, as spending slightly exceeded our fairly optimistic forecast heading into the season,” says comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “Increasing positive consumer sentiment, improving job growth and declining gas prices all combined to create a more favorable spending environment, and consumers responded by opening up their wallets in a way they hadn’t since before the financial crisis. In the end, we saw growth rates in the mid-double digits as the online channel continued to gain meaningful share from brick-and-mortar.”
The National Retail Federation predicted last fall a 4.1% increase in total retail sales during the holiday period, including offline and online purchases, but has not issued its estimate of actual sales. Euclid, which tracks U.S. retail store activity, reported today that traffic to stores declined 10% during the recent holiday season compared with 2013, but that the conversion rate, the percentage of store visitors to make a purchase, increased 2%.
In its pre-holiday forecast that included mobile purchases, comScore had projected a 16% increase in online retail sales during the 2014 holiday period. Shawn Milne, an analyst with investment firm Janney Capital Markets who covers e-commerce, estimated today that with mobile purchases included the 2014 holiday season likely produced a 17-18% increase in online retail sales, ahead of Janney’s own projection of a 15% increase in e-commerce for the season.
ComScore did not immediately respond to an inquiry about when it would release its final estimate of 2014 holiday sales, including purchases on mobile phones and tablets.
Another look at holiday online sales comes from Tangent Data Services, which processes 3 billion e-mail confirmations and receipts from retailers each quarter, mostly from the United States. Tangent says its data show online sales increased 18% year over year during the 2014 holiday season, the number of unique online shoppers increased 7% and the average online receipt increased 11%.
According to comScore, U.S. consumers purchased more than $1 billion online on 15 days during the recent holiday period, led by Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving. Here are the top 10 days for online shopping during November-December 2014, with the amount spent in billions, according to comScore:
- Monday, Dec. 1 (Cyber Monday): $2,038
- Tuesday, Dec. 2: $1,796
- Monday, Dec. 8: $1,615
- Friday, Nov. 28 (Black Friday): $1,505
- Friday, Dec. 12: $1,463
- Tuesday, Dec. 9: $1,343
- Thursday, Dec. 11: $1,192
- Wednesday, Dec. 3: $1,172
- Wednesday, Dec. 10: $1,168
- Tuesday, Dec. 16: $1,162